Trump’s E.U. Trade Deal Comes With Impossible Energy Promises

The European Union pledged to buy billions of dollars’ worth of energy resources from the United States. Experts say that’s unrealistic and could hurt Europe’s climate goals.

By Somini Sengupta and Max Bearak July 29, 2025  nytimes.com

When the Trump administration reached a trade deal with the European Union this week, the tariffs got much of the attention. But the agreement also includes a remarkable provision that could more than triple the amount of oil and gas America sells to the European Union.

Under the trade deal, the 27-country bloc says it will buy $250 billion in energy resources from the United States every year through the end of President Trump’s term. That’s a huge jump from the $70 billion it now buys, mainly in the form of crude oil and liquefied natural gas.

Analysts say it would be almost impossible to meet that sales target. Nevertheless, the terms, even if realized only in part, could have far-reaching effects on Europe’s economy and politics.

A significant change in fossil fuel use in Europe, one of the world’s biggest economies, could affect how quickly the Earth’s atmosphere continues to heat up, and thus, the fate of billions of people around the world. The burning of fossil fuels has raised global temperatures and aggravated heat waves, fires and floods, including in the United States and Europe.

Fossil fuels have shaped America’s interests abroad for decades. But rarely has an American administration used fossil fuel exports so aggressively as a political and economic tool in the energy choices countries make.

“This will strengthen the United States’ energy dominance, reduce European reliance on adversarial sources, and narrow our trade deficit with the E.U.,” the administration said in a fact sheet, referring to the European Union’s stated objective to reduce, if not eliminate, its purchasing of fuel from Russia.

A deal to buy so much energy from one country flies in the face of Europe’s other worry: energy security. Europe has been succeeding at weaning itself off Russian gas.

But the Trump deal could risk locking in dependence on the United States, and that’s not the only question surrounding the details of the agreement.

Could Europe even buy that much?

No, according to energy industry analysts. The dollar figure is “so far away from what is really possible that it has the hallmarks of something said just to get an agreement over the line,” said Chris Aylett, a research fellow at Chatham House, a foreign policy think tank based in London.

The European Union’s official statistics show that it imported an estimated $70 billion of oil and gas from the United States and $26 billion from Russia last year. So even if the European Union replaced all its Russian imports with American ones — which is a tall order on its own, given that U.S. fuels are shipped rather than piped — it wouldn’t make it halfway to the agreement’s target.

Europe is also rapidly adding renewable energy infrastructure. The countries of the European Union together are the leading importers of Chinese-made solar panels, and China now sells one in five electric vehicles bought in Europe. The European Union has adopted a law to have renewable energy sources make up at least 42.5 percent of its energy consumption by 2030, up from a quarter currently.

“Europe is well on its way to independence, thanks to the rapid growth of renewables,” said Laurence Tubiana, a former French climate diplomat who now heads the European Climate Foundation, an advocacy group. “It doesn’t need more high-price, high-risk L.N.G.,” she added, referring to liquefied natural gas.

There’s another hitch. It’s unlikely that E.U. political leaders have authority to dictate whom private companies buy energy from.

The agreement says it could also include the export of American nuclear technology to Europe. But analysts said the most promising technologies around a new generation of reactors were still years away from being ready to deploy.

Could the Trump administration slow down Europe’s climate ambitions?

It could, in two ways.

First, if Europeans end up buying more oil and gas over the next three years, it would increase Europe’s climate pollution. Second, U.S. gas is in liquefied form, and its carbon dioxide emissions are 10 times that of an equivalent volume of piped gas from Russia and elsewhere. That’s because more energy is required to liquefy it, transport it by ship and turn it back into gas.

The Trump deal could also bolster the president’s far-right political allies in Europe, who have sought to scuttle the European Union’s targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions over time. The European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, has proposed reducing the bloc’s planet-warming emissions by 90 percent by 2040, compared with 1990 levels. The European Parliament has yet to agree on the proposal.

This isn’t just about Europe

Fossil fuels were a central focus of the United States’ other recently announced trade deals. Japan, for instance, agreed to invest billions of dollars in the United States, including on a major expansion of U.S. energy imports, according to the White House.

The Trump administration has been pressuring Japan, South Korea and other Asian nations for months to finance a $44 billion liquefied natural gas project in Alaska. The project has been stalled for many years over questions of who will pay for it and whether Asian demand will last long enough into the future to justify it.

Most liquefied natural gas projects have an estimated life span of 40 to 50 years, and countries like Japan and South Korea have pledged to make their economies carbon-neutral by 2050.